Dark Night of the Soul
by bymak
Summary: "The dark night of the soul is a spiritual depression, a kind of existential crisis, that requires a deep and painful dip that must be experienced before enlightenment." Brianna Wiest - Thought Catalog


_Hey, I'm not so sure where this comes out from, but it's here._

_Enjoy,_

_M._

_"The dark night of the soul is a spiritual depression, a kind of existential crisis, that requires a deep and painful dip that must _be experienced_ before enlightenment."_

_Brianna Wiest - Thought Catalog_

* * *

She is having a bad day after another, and she seems so utterly out of place since, to anyone else, it doesn't look like a bad day at all.

It's not that she is not grateful for all she had, all she had seen and done. Or what she still has, sees and does. Even so, there's something… _Off._

There was an awful truth that she learned once and now, she wasn't willingly allowing to happen: Sometimes, even the strongest of them all needs to break.

It's been weeks brewing to this moment, months even. It was so utterly confusing to everyone around her that, despite her best efforts to keep it together, they all had figured something was wrong with her.

It was easy to hide it at first, but then, her usual cheery mood became a very irascible one. Spiteful remarks would answer the stupidest of the questions, and no one understood what had gotten her in such a mood, to begin with.

If she was honest, she wasn't sure what started them either.

She couldn't sleep, and when she did, it was plagued with dreams she'll rather forget. She felt stuck and lost. She knew the past weeks she had been hateful, and that she was behaving entirely out of her character. However, she was putting so much of her focus on trying to control herself that she knew in her heart that she was doomed to break.

And then, almost out of nowhere, she did.

She was passing by when she overheard it. It was just a side comment about how she was mistreating them, and how it wasn't fair for them to be at the blunt side of her current foul humor.

But that truth stung deep and hard.

The comment came from William, of all the people. Will was, after all, one of the few people in the world she had confided part of her life. It didn't help that on the other side of his claim, Nikola was listening. Nikola Tesla, her only remaining friend. The only one who had been around since her youth.

Helen took a deep breath, getting their attention without really wanting it. Will turned around, eyes wide and apology ready. But before he could, she'd run away.

"As I was going to say, protege, you might be a psychiatrist, but you don't have the slightest clue of what goes on in that mind of hers," Nikola said before he walked out of the room, not even trying to follow her.

Helen rushed through corridors trying hard to keep the last restrains on her feelings, closing the door behind her before the first few unruly tears came out. She cleaned them out of her face harshly; she was hating herself, feeling utterly weak as her feelings of unworthiness claimed her whole.

Yes, Helen Magnus was human, and she too suffered from imposter syndrome from time to time.

Years of accumulated failures and bad decisions that could be taken back to the early days of the Sanctuary had taken control of her mind. Flashes of memories danced clear one after another. One small chaos merging with the following one, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. There was no silver lining, no mercy in her thoughts, and most definitively, there was no one who would understand what she was going through.

"I would if you let me in," Nikola whispered, looking at her as if he knew exactly where her thoughts were at that moment.

"Get out!" Helen screamed at him, but he slowly got closer. "NOW, NIKOLAI! LET ME THE HELL ALONE!" she shouted. Nikola didn't budge.

He hadn't just climbed the wall to her room to leave at the first request. Instead, he closed the distance, and soon, she was hitting his chest with so much violence that Nikola could feel the bruises forming and healing. Still, he couldn't care the less about himself.

He could hear the stream of things she was calling him if only to make him go away, and still, he remained. Nikola forced her into his embrace, one Helen fought against but knew needed desperately. She slapped his chest once more, weakly this time, and then she looked at him in the eyes.

"Please, Nikola," she whispered.

Tears filling her eyes as quickly as they fell, and Helen realized then she wasn't sure if she was asking him to leave anymore. Even if that was her unsure request, he didn't move.

Nikola embraced her tightly and allowed her to cry as she needed. Softly whispered words in his mother tongue were out of his lips, comforting her, even if she only understood half of those.

Helen hid her face in the crook of his neck and grabbed him as if her life depended of it. As if he was a rock in a brave sea, and she, a drowning woman that hoped to stay afloat until the end of the storm.

It took her a while to settle, and then a couple of moments before she realized she was sitting over him. Against all the odds, she was comfortably snuggling up to him. She didn't know for sure how long it was since he had climbed her wall, or since they were sharing her couch with her tucked snuggly in his arm.

It was a surprising thing for Helen. Not only that Nikola had remained, but that he was soothing her in ways she never thought possible.

"Why?" She asked once she found her voice, it was raspy and sounded nothing like her usual commandeering one. His eyes found hers, and his hand caressed her cheek lovingly.

"Because you are worthy, Helen," he said, and being at the end of so much affection made her eyes fill up with tears again. She avoided his eyes, embarrassed at how little she thought of herself when she could see how much he thought of her. "Look at me, Helen, and listen to me close: You. Are. Worthy," he said, raising her face softly. "I know you don't feel like that at this moment. I know you haven't been feeling it for a while now, but you are."

"I," she started, thinking quickly a bunch of excuses that could justify her actions.

"No, Helen," Nikola smiled. Understanding washed his expression, and she gulped. "I don't need your excuses. If anything, let me be the friend I always have been. I know you, I was there with you in some of your darkest moments, and sometimes, I was too far away to help. But distance never made me forget how deeply those moments affect you."

He looked at her, giving her another caress along with a sweet, sad smile.

"People don't realize you wear your heart on your sleeve, Helen. They don't notice how you are constantly giving all of you to them. They simply know that you will do anything for them and still be _Helen Magnus_ because they don't know any different."

"Niko," she whispered. He grimaced.

"There's a reason I remain, Helen. I remain because I love you, every part of you. This one even more," he confessed.

"How can you love what I hate the most?" She asked, her lower lip quivering a little.

"Because," he shrugged. "This is the most beautiful part of you. It's vulnerable, it's broken, and it shows how much you care. Even if sometimes you don't know how to deal with the pain that it brings to yourself."

He sought her eyes, trying to make her understand his words were only the truest of the truths.

"Well, at least explains your obsession with broken people," Helen grimaced, trying to lighten up the mood. He gave her a toothy grin.

"It's more a Helen Magnus obsession." He winked.

She raised her eyebrow and was about to tell him how silly he was when he stopped her. Placing a slender finger over her lips, while his loving gaze was, once again, digging holes in her eyes.

"You'll see, if there's anything you taught me, is that broken people are the most beautiful people around. You, somehow, picked all your pieces together, and then, not caring about how broken you feel… how broken you are… you give away some more. Even if it costs you too much." He ushered her out of his lap slowly, and then he stood up.

"I might be vampire strong, but you are the strongest person I know. Sometimes even the strongest people need to break to find the diamond hidden in themselves," he said, taking a few steps away.

"When did you become such a mystic?" Helen grinned.

"Wouldn't you wish to know," he smiled. "Go! Have a shower, compose yourself and hurry, I'm certain there's someone from your staff desperately looking for your forgiveness," he threw over his shoulder.

"Niko?" Helen called, stopping him from leaving her room. "Whatever can do I to pay this back?" She wondered, and he smiled. She might not be whole yet, but at least she had all the pieces together again.

"Oh, Ijubav!" he said, rushing to her side and caressing her cheek. "It's me who has been finally able the pay it back to you?" She frowned, confused by his words. It was his turn to lower his gaze. "The truth is, I was broken until I found you. Unbeknownst to you, you are the rock which has been keeping me afloat since Oxford."

"I," she started, but she didn't know what to say, not when she wasn't back to her usual self, and she could feel too much and feared even more.

"Don't, Helen. The only thing I need from you is for you to mend yourself. Then, when you are whole and decide you want me, I'll be there. Now, if you're about to break, call me, you need not do it alone… Not anymore. I won't judge, and you know you can trust me. I won't tell a soul."

She smiled and nodded.

"Thank you, Nikola," she whispered a placed a kiss on his cheek.

"Self-mastery demands you to know the full mystery of self, not just a dogmatic, narrow-minded view based on love and light, said Nebro Tishin," he shrugged as she raised an eyebrow. "I read that in some obscure website, I'll rather not bring up," Nikola grinned.

Winking at her, he walked away. Helen shook her head amusedly and feeling a bit more like herself. She walked to the shower to get herself together once more.

It took her years after that encounter to understand what Nikola meant. It was when she was about to blow up her Sanctuary that she saw Nikola standing next to her. Somehow remembered that phrase and that day, vividly. With a loving smile, she pulled him close and kissed him... Then, she let him go, ushered him out of the Sanctuary towards safety, and blew her house up.

It was weeks after that when he had found himself climbing the wall into her room, allowing himself to dwell on that kiss now that she was finally out of danger.

"Why didn't you just use the door, Niko?" she grinned from her bed. She might be out of the infirmary and finally off danger, but she still needed to rest.

"I thought it would be closed," he shrugged.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, her eyes twinkling.

"I.." Nikola started. He was about to make an excuse when he looked at her, and he changed his mind. "Why did you kiss me?"

"You told me to search for you when I was whole, it took me 113 years to figure out that won't ever happen," she smiled sadly, and he lowered his head, sadness leaving his body in waves. "Now I know I need not be whole, I need to be honest with me. My hundred thirteen year's vacation allowed me to understand not only the love and light but the darkness that comes with me. Something that you always understood better than I."

"I'm a vampire, Helen, if someone needs to understand darkness, that would be me," he pointed out. Helen chuckled. "What?"

"You know what's funny? I understood my darkness because of you." He frowned in confusion. "Your memories are fresher than mine, Niko. You said something about how I kept giving myself all the time. Yet you were wrong. So utterly wrong. You'll see, Niko, there's one person I couldn't get out of my mind since I went back in time, and it was you. Every time I knew something wrong was about to happen, somehow I knew you would be by my side."

"That's what friends are for, right?"

"You are not my friend, Niko. You are my rock, the one that has always kept me afloat, and I was blind when I didn't see it. I was stubbornly keeping myself from the truest of the truths."

"What would that be?" he asked, intrigued.

"Sometimes, even the strongest of them all needs to break," she said. "If only to figure out what they already had."

"You are saying?"

"I'm willing to break, Niko, if you are there to help me pick myself together, as you have always been," Helen smiled, patting the side of her bed.

Nikola moved closer, his instincts telling him she was going to break and cry. That she would need a friend. But Helen stopped him from getting too close to her. Instead, she placed a hand on his chest, above his heart, and searched his eyes. Nikola gasped when he saw love shining back at him. Pure, dark, and untainted love.

"I love you, Nikola Tesla. I loved you since you saved me back then in Oxford when we met. I wasn't strong enough to break myself and admit it… Until now."

"You… Love me?" he asked, confused, and she chuckled.

"More than you would ever know," she said, grabbing him from his vest and pulling him close.

"Thank goodness we have eternity for you to show me then," he grinned mischievously against her lips before they kissed.

In the end, everything is just a leap of faith. It's us, the ones that must decide if we jump, even if we know for sure we will break.

_The end._


End file.
